A Land More Kind Than Home (9 page)

“What did he say?”

“‘Mama,'” she said. “He called out for me, and he said it. He said, ‘Mama.'”

I lay my head back on the seat and felt my skin get cold and numb like all the blood had been drained out of my body. I closed my eyes because I was afraid I might throw up if I even opened them to look around. My hand wasn't even throbbing anymore, and it was like I'd already forgotten about that splinter. None of us made a sound, and all I could hear was the hum of the tires against the road.

“Are you sure it was him?” I asked her.

“I know it was,” she said. “I know it was because other folks heard him too. They were laying their hands on him, and you know how much he doesn't like that, and I guess it just got to be too much for him and that's when he hollered out for me. It was so loud in there with the music going and all that praying, and they were on him, and I swear if it hadn't been the Lord's work I wouldn't have been able to hear him. It was a miracle.”

“But what happens if he doesn't say a word ever again?”

“He will,” she said. “The Lord ain't going to give us this gift just this one time and then take it away. That ain't no kind of mercy.”

“But how do you know what God's going to do?” I said.

“I just know,” she said.

“But how? Maybe God doesn't want Stump to say nothing else. You tell us all the time that nobody can ever know God's will.”

“That's right,” she said. “You can't. But the Lord doesn't play no tricks. Evil plays tricks, and there ain't no room for evil in this family.”

I kept my head back on the seat and swallowed hard even though I knew I wasn't swallowing nothing but air, and I tried to keep myself from getting sick. I felt my forehead start sweating because I knew that Mama would tell me that I was evil for being the one who hollered out for her and then letting her believe it was Stump. It didn't even matter whether she knew it was me or not, I felt evil just the same. She rolled her window back down like she was done talking, and that air coming in felt good against my face, even if it was hot and dusty.

“What do you think Daddy's going to say?” I asked over the sound of the wind pouring into the truck.

“We ain't going to tell him yet,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because he'll need to see it for himself,” she said. “He ain't going to believe in miracles no other way.”

“Why wouldn't he believe it?”

“Because he don't want to.”

I closed my eyes and thought about Daddy having to see a miracle to believe in it, and then I thought about mirages again, about how miracles might be like that sometimes. It was like Mama was lost in the desert and had gotten so thirsty that she was willing to see anything that might make her feel better about being lost. I knew that she needed to think she heard Stump holler out for her, even if I knew he didn't, and I wondered if it was a sin to think any less of a miracle just because you know it ain't real.

I looked down at my hand and I thought about trying to slide that splinter right out, and I took my finger and felt where the end of it stuck out of my palm. The rest of it was right there just beneath my skin like a branch that's frozen just under the surface of a pond in the wintertime.

“Quit messing with that splinter,” Mama said. “You're just going to work it down in there deeper, and then I won't ever be able to get it out.”

M
AMA PULLED OFF THE HIGHWAY AND DROVE DOWN THE
L
ONG
Branch Road toward the house. Up ahead, my daddy's tobacco fields sat on the left-hand side of the road, and I could see where he'd started to cut and stick the burley and hang it upside down to dry. It looked like somebody had come and pitched little, green teepees in the field as far as you could see. He'd come along in a few days and pick up those sticks full of burley and toss them onto the sled before hanging them in the barn.

The rows of burley that hadn't been cut and stuck yet were tall and thick, and when me and Stump took a mind to hide out we'd run out into the field like somebody was chasing us, and then we'd pretend like nobody could ever find us. I liked to imagine that one day in the late summer Daddy would be out working in the field sticking the tobacco, and he'd come up a row and look down and find me and Stump still hunkered down and hiding out.

“Is this where y'all have been?” he'd ask. He'd look over at Stump, and Stump would smile just a little bit. “What are you smiling about?” he'd ask.

Mama turned left into our driveway; it was gravel and full of holes, and we bumped along and kicked up gravel dust until we got around the corner and saw the house sitting back up in the holler. I looked for Daddy on the porch just in case Joe Bill's mama had called him, but I didn't see him. But then I looked to the left of the house, and I saw Daddy standing outside by the barn and he had a shovel in his hand with something hanging off the end of it. When we got closer I could see it was a big old snake.

“What in the world,” Mama said.

“It looks like a snake,” I told her.

“It sure does,” she said and sighed loud enough for me to hear her. “He certainly does.”

She parked the truck in front of the house, and I opened the door and hopped out onto the driveway.

“Come on, Stump,” I said, and I ran past the front of the truck across the yard over to where Daddy stood by the barn. I could hear Stump running behind me. Daddy wore an old blue Braves cap with the white “A” on it and an old button-down shirt and blue jeans. His work boots were unlaced, and his jeans were tucked down inside them. I stopped in front of him and caught my breath and looked at that snake. It'd been chopped just below the head, and its neck was bent like it was looking at us funny. Blood and guts hung out where it'd been cut.

“What kind of snake is it?” I asked Daddy.

He smiled. “A dead one.”

“For real,” I said. “What kind is it?”

“Look here,” he said. He turned the shovel over and dumped the snake out in the gravel, and then he leaned the shovel up against the barn. The snake was a yellowy-brown color with black stripes running all the way down its body. It must've been four feet long and as big around as my arm. Daddy kneeled down beside it and picked up its tail. “Come take a look at this,” he said.

Me and Stump walked over to where Daddy had a hold of the snake's tail, and we both squatted down to get a better look at it. Daddy shook it back and forth, and it sounded like a dried bean pod when he did it.

“Is it a rattlesnake?” I asked him.

“A timber rattler,” he said.

“I ain't ever seen one of them around here before.”

“I haven't either,” he said. “Not in a long time.”

“Jess!” Mama hollered from the front porch. “Come on in here and let me take a look at that hand.”

I walked across the yard and went up the steps and found Mama in the kitchen. She'd lit a long wooden kitchen match, and she held the flame under a little sewing needle, and then she laid the needle down on a napkin and shook the match until the flame went out. She lit another one and held it under a pair of tweezers and then shook that one until it went out too.

“All right,” Mama said. She reached out and took my right hand by the wrist and held it in front of her. “You need to sit still.”

“It's going to hurt, isn't it?” I said.

“I hope not,” she said, “but you never know with those old bats. They can give you some awfully bad splinters.”

“It was a board,” I told her.

“That's right,” she said like she'd forgotten.

She held the needle in between her fingers and took the tip and started picking at the skin around the splinter. I expected it to be burning hot, but I couldn't hardly feel it because my skin was already sore and raw from the splinter being in there for so long. I watched that needle, and I kept waiting to feel it prick me.

“What's that going to do?” I asked her.

“It's going to loosen it up,” she said. “We want it to slide right out of there. Otherwise, I'll end up having to yank on it.”

“It looks like it would come out right now,” I said.

“It's a whole lot deeper than you think it is,” Mama said. “That skin around it is nice and tight.”

She picked at it with that needle a little bit longer, and then she laid the needle down on the napkin and picked up the tweezers. There was a little bit more of that splinter sticking out of my hand now, and Mama took the tip of the tweezers and closed them around it and gave it a tug, but that splinter wouldn't even budge.

“I can feel it down in there now,” I said. “It seems like it ain't going to come out.”

Mama grabbed hold of it again, and this time she broke off the long part of it where it was sticking out of my hand.

“Shoot,” she said. I looked and saw that there wasn't no more of the wood to grab on to. The rest of it was still stuck down in there, and it looked like a long, skinny freckle spread out just beneath my skin.

“How you going to get it out now?” I asked her.

“We're going to have to dig it out,” she said. She picked up that needle again and dug around and tried to pop that splinter up through my skin. It was hurting so bad that it made my eyes water.

“That really hurts,” I said.

“Well, we need to get it,” she said. “It ain't good for you just to leave it in there.”

“There ain't that much of it left,” I said. “I can't even feel it in there anymore.”

Daddy opened the screen door from the front porch, and him and Stump walked into the house and came into the kitchen. Daddy leaned up against the counter and crossed his arms and looked at me and Mama where we sat at the table. Stump walked through the kitchen, and I heard him go down the hall to our bedroom.

“What are y'all doing?” Daddy asked.

“I'm trying to get this splinter out of your son's hand,” Mama said. “I already got most of it, but there's still a little bit down in there that I can't get ahold of.”

Daddy walked to the table and looked over Mama's shoulder at my hand. He squinted his eyes like he was looking at something way far off in the distance.

“There ain't hardly nothing there, Julie,” he said. “He'll be all right.” Mama stopped picking at me with the needle and sighed.

“That's fine to say, Ben,” she said. “But it needs to come out. There ain't no use in leaving it in there if I can get it now.”

“Is it going to hurt you to leave it in there, Jess?” he asked.

“No, sir,” I said.

“He's fine, Julie,” Daddy said. I lifted my hand out of Mama's and looked at my palm up close. A little bit of wood still hid down in there, but it wasn't sticking out like it was before. “Hey, Jess,” Daddy said, “I need you and your brother to bury that snake for me. I don't want that thing laying out there and rotting. No telling what kind of animals it'll bring up out of the woods if it just sits there.” Mama turned around in her chair and looked up at Daddy where he stood behind her. Daddy looked at her. “I went ahead and lopped its head off,” he said. “It ain't going to hurt them.” He looked at me. “But you remember, Jess,” he said, “even a dead snake will strike until the sun goes down.”

“That ain't true,” I said.

“All right,” he said, smiling. “If you don't believe me, that's fine.”

“He's already got one splinter today,” Mama said. “He doesn't need to be shoveling nothing with that hand.”

“He'll be all right,” Daddy told her.

“Where should we bury him?” I asked.

“I don't know,” he said. “Somewhere out there behind the barn will be fine. Y'all don't have to dig it too deep—maybe just a couple feet.”

I stood up from my chair and walked down the hall to our bedroom to get Stump.

“Hold on,” Mama said. She got up too and followed me down the hall, but she walked past me and went into the bathroom and I heard her open the medicine cabinet and move stuff around on the shelves. I walked into me and Stump's room and found him sitting on the bed with his quiet box in his lap. He looked up at me, and then he picked up the top where it sat on the bed beside him and put it back on. He stood up from the bed and carried it toward the closet and stood on his tiptoes and slid it back onto the top shelf. Then he just stood there looking into the closet like there was something else he wanted to find.

“Daddy wants us to bury that snake,” I said. He didn't turn around. “He wants us to go out there and do it before something carries it off.” I heard Mama leave the bathroom and walk toward our room.

“Hold on, y'all,” she said. She walked into the bedroom with some gauze pads and some tape and some first-aid ointment in her hands. “Sit down on the bed here, and let's see what we can do,” she said. “After that y'all need to get changed out of them church clothes.” She looked at my shirt where that blood had dried all over the front of it. “I don't know what we're going to do about that,” she said.